Why I Collect Vintage Computers
The C64 is the centerpiece of my collection. Not because it's the rarest machine or the most powerful — because it's the one that makes you feel something.
I have a Commodore 64.
Most people my age who grew up around computers have a story about a C64, an Apple II, a TRS-80, something. Mine starts with a neighbor’s house, a cartridge game, and the realization that a machine could do things I didn’t understand yet. That gap between what I saw and what I knew — that’s what got me.
I’ve spent thirty years closing that gap professionally. C#, SQL, .NET, business software. I know exactly what’s happening when a line of code runs. The mystery is mostly gone, which is fine. That’s what mastery looks like.
But the C64 puts the mystery back.
6502 assembly
Modern programming is layers. You write in a language that compiles to bytecode or machine code, runs on an OS that manages memory and processes, on hardware that abstracts its own complexity. You rarely see the bottom.
On the C64 you are at the bottom. There is no OS in the modern sense. There is BASIC in ROM and the bare metal beneath it. When you write 6502 assembly, you are talking directly to the processor. Load a value into register A. Store it at memory address $D020. The border color changes. That’s it. That’s the whole chain.
I’m learning this slowly. I have two projects going — a BASIC interpreter written in assembly (modbasic) and a full-screen text editor (ed64). Neither is finished. Both are teaching me more about how computers work than thirty years of professional software development did.
The machines
There’s something about the physical objects too. The C64 keyboard has a feel that no modern keyboard does. The SID chip — the sound hardware — was designed by Bob Yannes and it still sounds better than most synthesizers made today. These machines were engineered by people who cared.
I’m not precious about it. I use the machines, I modify them when needed, I don’t keep them behind glass. But I do think the craftsmanship of that era was real in a way that’s harder to find now.
What this section will become
Right now I have one machine. The collection will grow. Each machine will get its own page — how I acquired it, what condition it was in, what I’ve done with it.
The 6502 projects will get their own documentation as they become worth showing. I’m not there yet. But the gap is still there, and I’m still closing it.